The topology of animal transport networks contributes substantially to how fast and to what extent a disease can transmit between animal holdings. Therefore, public authorities in many countries mandate livestock holdings to report all movements of animals. However, the reported data often does not contain information about the exact sequence of transports, making it impossible to assess the effect of truck sharing and truck contamination on disease transmission. The aim of this study was to analyze the topology of the Swiss pig transport network by means of social network analysis and to assess the implications for disease transmission between animal holdings. In particular, we studied how additional information about transport sequences changes the topology of the contact network. The study is based on the official animal movement database in Switzerland and a sample of transport data from one transport company. The results show that the Swiss pig transport network is highly fragmented, which mitigates the risk of a large-scale disease outbreak. By considering the time sequence of transports, we found that even in the worst case, only 0.34% of all farm-pairs were connected within one month. However, both network connectivity and individual connectedness of farms increased if truck sharing and especially truck contamination were considered. Therefore, the extent to which a disease may be transmitted between animal holdings may be underestimated if we only consider data from the official animal movement database. Our results highlight the need for a comprehensive analysis of contacts between farms that includes indirect contacts due to truck sharing and contamination. As the nature of animal transport networks is inherently temporal, we strongly suggest the use of temporal network measures in order to evaluate individual and overall risk of disease transmission through animal transportation.

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Abstract. An approach to improve an RCC-derived geospatial approximation is presented which makes use of concept inclusion axioms in OWL. The algorithm used to control the approximation combines hypothesis testing with consistency checking provided by a knowledge representation system based on description logics. Propositions about the consistency of the refined ABox w.r.t. the associated TBox when compared to baseline ABox and TBox are made. Formal proves of the divergent consistency results when checking either of both are provided. The application of the approach to a geospatial setting results in a roughly tenfold improved approximation when using the refined ABox and TBox. Ways to further improve the approximation and to automate the detection of falsely calculated relations are discussed.

Abstract. Environmental databases store a wide variety of data from heterogeneous sources which are described with domain-specific terminologies and refer to distinct locations. In order to make them accessible also to non-expert users, terminological concepts and spatial relations must be represented in a way that they can be exploited for searches. In this paper we propose a hybrid knowledge representation system architecture which integrates terminological and spatial aspects of the application domain and provides support for reasoning with RCC, a well-known calculus for spatial reasoning, and the Semantic Web's ontology language OWL. Our approach is motivated by the observation that RCC cannot be expressed in OWL without a major revision of the latter. Issues of upholding consistency of the knowledge base in view of an evolving ontology and of computational complexity are discussed.

Big Data approaches offer potential benefits for improving animal health, but they have not been broadly implemented in livestock production systems. Privacy issues, the large number of stakeholders, and the competitive environment all make data sharing, and integration a challenge in livestock production systems. The Swiss pig production industry illustrates these and other Big Data issues. It is a highly decentralized and fragmented complex network made up of a large number of small independent actors collecting a large amount of heterogeneous data. Transdisciplinary approaches hold promise for overcoming some of the barriers to implementing Big Data approaches in livestock production systems. The purpose of our paper is to describe the use of a transdisciplinary approach in a Big Data research project in the Swiss pig industry. We provide a brief overview of the research project named “Pig Data,” describing the structure of the project, the tools developed for collaboration and knowledge transfer, the data received, and some of the challenges. Our experience provides insight and direction for researchers looking to use similar approaches in livestock production system research.